My computer is a wreck?

[MR ZenWiz]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 7:47 PM,  <jimkvg at 3web.com> wrote:
> I had been using Ubuntu 9.10 for quite a long time after installing it in a
> Windows XP Pro system beside Ubuntu 10.4 and I enjoyed it very much.  (I
> installed the Ubuntu 10.4, but I couldn?t get it in an internet connection
> so I resorted to 9.10, that?s why.)  I gave an Ubuntu 10.10 a see.  I
> downloaded it and burnt it to make a Live CD.  When I restarted the PC, I
> noticed two CD/DVD drives?s light monitors flashing several times front and
> back and I stared at black screen.  It didn?t even turn on, not even BIOS
> menu screen that I tried. I pushed the power button to turn PC off, waited a
> long while and then pushed it back on.  Same thing happened.  After several
> attempts I decided to turn the main PC switch on the back of the case off.
>  When I turned it back on and pushed the power button on the front.
>  Nothing.  That got me wondering ... has the BIOS been shot?  or
> motherboard?  I meant ?screwed up? whatever you call it.   It left me
> staring at black screen (monitor was off) to my great dismay, wondering what
> went wrong.  Can someone please help me pinpoint trouble?  Should I short
> the CMOS jumper (pin 2 & 3) on the motherboard to clear it up?  I want to be
> completely sure I would do it correctly.  Any suggestion of what I could do
> to fix the problem?
> Motherboard is msi 785GTM-E45 with AMD Athlon triple core CPU.  Two drives
> are LG SuperMulti CD/DVD.
>
In order, I would check:

Monitor
Power Supply
Video Card
Motherboard Battery
Motherboard

Look for dead fans (power problems) and lights that are not coming on.
 If you have a speaker on the motherboard, do you get beeps?  Those
are base level diagnostics.

If you have spares, that's a good way to go.  If not, start with the
cheapest parts to replace and go up.

Shorting the CMOS will only help if the CMOS fell victim to a dead
battery, but if so it's already been reset.

I seriously doubt that Ubuntu had anything to do with this directly,
but stranger things have been known to happen.